


Can We Talk? (What Do You Want?)

by AnonymousDandelion



Category: Good Omens (Radio), Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anxious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Asexual Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Asexual Relationship, Awkward Aziraphale (Good Omens), Awkward Conversations, Awkward Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale Is Trying (Good Omens), Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale Overthinks (Good Omens), Aziraphale is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Communication, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Crowley's Bentley (Good Omens), Cuddling & Snuggling, Developing Relationship, Fictober 2020, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), Love Confessions (more or less), M/M, Mutual Pining, Non-Sexual Intimacy, POV Alternating, Post-Canon, Sad Crowley (Good Omens), St James's Park (Good Omens), The Bentley Ships It (Good Omens), fictober20, prompt conglomeration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:27:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27265711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousDandelion/pseuds/AnonymousDandelion
Summary: Aziraphale wrung his hands. “I didn’t mean to do this today, I wanted to find more sources and take more notes and do more cross-referencing and—”Crowley held up a finger. “Hang on. Back up! I missed this memo.Whathave you been researching?”“Methods for healthy communication,” Aziraphale explained. “How to… that is to say… well... suggestions for how people can have effective conversations about important things."Inside the Bentley, Crowley blanched, slightly but visibly.~ ~ ~Some months post-Armageddon't, there are a lot of things and feelings between Aziraphale and Crowley that they still haven't talked about. Things come to a head, and they may just have to talk about these things. (Needless to say, that's going to be easier said than done.)
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 46
Kudos: 240
Collections: Aspec-friendly Good Omens, Fictober20





	Can We Talk? (What Do You Want?)

**Author's Note:**

> After seeing the [ Fictober 2020 writing prompts](https://fictober-event.tumblr.com/prompts20), I wanted to try writing something with them. Since I was already doing another daily prompt challenge ([Flufftober](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1957708)) for the month, I decided to try something a bit different for Fictober: One story, incorporating all 31 prompts. Here is the result!

Aziraphale tossed another piece of bread, and watched the ducks race each other to retrieve it. Standing by a pond and feeding waterfowl with Crowley. It was an old, long-accustomed practice — something they’d been doing together, at one location or another, for centuries, since well before St. James Park even dreamed of existing — and the angel, for his part, never tired of it. A pleasantly relaxing activity, mindless without being tedious.

And, more importantly, it was a thread of familiarity, something he _knew_ , something that he could hold on to in this post-apocalyptic era where nothing had actually changed, except that _everything_ had changed, in ways Aziraphale still wasn’t confident he was ready to deal with, in spite of all the research and reading he’d been doing on the topic these last few months.

He was startled out of his woolgathering by the sudden, belated realization that Crowley had said something.

“I can’t do this anymore.”

~ ~ ~

It was not the first time in six thousand years that the thought had crossed Crowley’s mind, about one topic or another. Always in passing, of course, no matter what the cause; Crowley was too much of an optimist for the mood to last. And besides, he was realistic enough to recognize that not only _could_ he continue to do it (whatever “it” was in any given context), he almost certainly _would_ continue to do it, and in most cases at the end of the day he probably had little or no say in the matter anyway.

Hastur and Ligur; the Spanish Inquisition; da Vinci’s funeral; a houseplant with a spot; a reflexive “we’re not friends” from the only being Crowley had ever been able to think of as a friend for more than a handful of decades. Between Hell and Earth, Crowley had never had a shortage of things to provoke the occasional fit of frantic despair.

So, no, this time — standing in the park, feeding the ducks, separated by a careful few feet from Aziraphale, exchanging carefully trivial talk, carefully acting like the end of the world hadn’t come and gone three months back and changed everything and nothing — was by no means the first time that the thought _I can’t do this anymore_ had crossed Crowley’s mind about something.

It was, however, the first time that he realized, half a second too late to bite the words back, that he’d said it _out loud_ , with someone right there to hear him say it.

With _Aziraphale_ right there. And now the angel was opening his mouth, surely about to ask Crowley what he meant.

Crowley panicked. He turned. He ran.

He found himself outside the Bentley, flung himself into the vehicle, slammed and locked the door behind him… and then folded in the driver’s seat, head in hands.

~ ~ ~

“Crowley? Where are you— no, come back!” Aziraphale could feel the ducks, secret agents, and miscellaneous other park-goers staring at him with varying flavors of curiosity, concern, bewilderment, and/or fascination. Rushing after the fleeing demon, Aziraphale ignored them all.

The Bentley was still parked when Aziraphale came panting up to it. At least that meant Crowley hadn’t left altogether. Not yet, at least.

Not that it would make much of a difference whether or not the car was there, if the demon inside it refused to come out or to let Aziraphale come in. And the fact that Aziraphale didn’t know or understand _what_ had precipitated Crowley’s sudden flight was of no assistance at all when it came to clarifying the best course of action in this case.

Maybe the right thing was to leave Crowley to himself. But what if Crowley needed help with something?

Or maybe the right thing to do was to talk to him. But what if that only upset him further?

Or maybe…

Aziraphale didn’t _know_ what was the right thing to do, that was the problem. He wasn’t equipped for this situation yet, he hadn’t finished his research on communication, he wasn’t _ready_ …

But ready or not, there was the Bentley, and there, visible through the window, was the demon, miserably slumped in a way that hurt in Aziraphale’s gut just to see, especially with the echo of _I can’t do this anymore_ reverberating in his ears. Ready or not, Aziraphale had to do _something_ … and whether or not it was what he _should_ do, he couldn’t bring himself to leave Crowley alone like this.

Aziraphale closed his eyes, took a breath, set his shoulders, and then tapped on the car’s window.

~ ~ ~

Crowley looked up at the tapping sound, and wasn’t really surprised to see Aziraphale’s face peering through the window.

He put his head down again and hunched his shoulders, doing his best to make his posture communicate _Go away_.

“Crowley?”

“You better leave now,” Crowley said into his hands.

“Are you— are you okay?”

Crowley considered ignoring Aziraphale, but rationally speaking (not that Crowley was feeling very rational), there wasn’t much point to doing that. Instead, he sat up part way to mumble, “I’m fine.”

“If you’re saying something, I can’t hear you.”

Crowley opened his mouth to say the words again, loud enough so as to project through the Bentley’s walls this time. _You better leave now. I’m fine._

The words stuck in his throat.

“Crowley? I— I don’t know what’s wrong, but I’ve been thinking… I think we should… I think we should talk about it.”

Crowley swore silently, because Aziraphale’s muffled voice was shaking slightly, and Crowley couldn’t bring himself to tell Aziraphale to go away when the angel was in such a state. But he also didn’t want to talk right now. If he did, there was no knowing what he might say.

“Do we have to?” he called out.

“We don’t _have_ to.” Even without looking, Crowley could effortlessly picture the expression on the angel’s face, eyes wide and worried. “Not if you don’t want to. But… but I do think it might be worth it. You can’t stay in there forever.”

“Watch me,” Crowley muttered under his breath. Then, louder, “Can’t it wait?” He didn’t mean to sound quite so petulant. “Just… give me a minute or an hour.” Or a day, or a week, or possibly a century, or however long it took for Crowley to decide what he should do about this hole he was digging himself ever deeper into.

“Y-yes, of course. Take your time.”

Crowley put his head down again.

When he glanced up five minutes later, Aziraphale was still standing outside the Bentley, patiently waiting.

When he glanced up five minutes after that, Aziraphale was still standing outside the Bentley, patiently waiting.

When he glanced up five minutes after _that_ , Aziraphale was _still_ standing outside the Bentley, and although a corner of Crowley’s mind did stop to wonder just how long Aziraphale was capable of patiently waiting for him, a more powerful part was feeling guilty about the angel standing out there looking so lost.

The latter part of his mind made Crowley sit up reluctantly, roll down the Bentley’s window[1], and say, “What did you want to talk about?”

~ ~ ~

Ready or not (and Aziraphale was definitely not), it looked like that conversation Aziraphale had been preparing for had to happen now.

And naturally, after spending fifteen minutes trying to decide what he should say when Crowley was ready, the moment Crowley _did_ give him permission to actually start talking, Aziraphale had nothing to say.

He stuttered meaningless syllables for a few moments, then finally gave up and fumbled in thin air to withdraw a three-ring binder. He held the object up to the window so Crowley could see it. “Will you look at this?” Aziraphale blurted.

“Huh?” Crowley’s look of borderline panic turned to one of mostly confusion, which Aziraphale supposed was probably a minor improvement. "What is that?"

“It’s—” Aziraphale wrung his hands, binder and all. He wasn’t ready for this, he needed to read more, to prepare more, he wasn’t _ready_ … “I’ve been doing research,” he elaborated.

Crowley’s confusion did not appear to lessen.

“I didn’t mean to do this today, I wanted to find more sources and take more notes and do more cross-referencing and—”

Crowley held up a finger. “Hang on. Back up! I missed this memo. _What_ have you been researching?”

“Methods for healthy communication,” Aziraphale explained. “How to… that is to say… well… suggestions for how people can have effective conversations about important things.”

Inside the Bentley, Crowley blanched, slightly but visibly. "Not interested, thank you.”

“Oh. I just… I thought…” Aziraphale faltered to a halt. “Never mind. You’re right, it was silly of me.”

Something in Crowley’s face twitched. “I didn’t say that. Oh, bugger. Give me that.”

“Pardon? Oh. Right. Of course. Here.” Still stammering, Aziraphale passed the binder through the window.

~ ~ ~

Crowley may have taken Aziraphale’s binder because he couldn’t bear the hurt-puppy look on the angel’s face — but that didn’t mean he actually wanted anything to do with its contents. He flipped at random through the pages inside the binder.

Pages and pages and pages of notes in Aziraphale’s neat handwriting. Pages on talking; listening; attitude; respect; empathy; honesty; tone; body language; timing…

Finally, Crowley looked up. Aziraphale was still outside the window, watching him.

“You did this?” Crowley said, to fill the silence.

It was a rhetorical question — _obviously_ Aziraphale had done it, and really, who else did Crowley know who would have had the patience, inclination, or skill to compile and sort through innumerable scientific studies, popular books and articles, interviews with counselors and laypeople, even internet forum discussion posts[2]? — but the angel gave a nervous nod anyway. “Yes I did, what about it?”

Crowley shrugged. “That was impressive, that’s all. I’m impressed. It’s a lot.”

“Yes, well. I suppose.” Aziraphale looked downcast.

Crowley sighed, and popped the passenger side door open. “Fine, you can come in.”

Aziraphale’s head came up, startled. “Did I ask?”

Crowley let the side of his mouth quirk faintly upwards. “You didn’t need to.”

~ ~ ~

Aziraphale sank into the passenger seat, torn between being relieved and continuing to be worried. He ended up opting for the second, but tempered with a bit of the first.

“So,” he said, and halted.

“So?” Crowley said. “You wanted to talk about something?”

Aziraphale winced.

He’d thought the reason he didn’t feel ready to talk must have been because he just hadn’t read enough. He’d assumed, when he’d started on his research project not long after Armageddon, that there would come a time when he would feel properly equipped for talking about all the things they _didn’t_ talk about.

He was beginning to wonder now, though, if any amount of reading on the theory of communication would have properly prepared him for actually putting it into practice.

The trouble was, now that he was in a position to actually use it, everything Aziraphale _had_ read, everything he’d researched, everything he’d taken such meticulous notes on, had completely fled his mind. The only thing he could remember now was _open and honest communication is important to any relationship_ , which — no matter how true it might be, and most of his sources did seem to agree that it was indeed true — really wasn’t a very helpful handbook when taken on its own.

Crowley waited in silence for a little while. Then he said again, “ _So?_ ” He waved the binder in the air. “This was your bloody idea. What do your _research findings_ say to do?”

“‘Open, honest communication.' _”_ Aziraphale winced again. “I like doing research, you know I do. But… well, you see, apparently that’s the easy part. I thought it would help make this easier, but… I’m not doing a very good job of communicating, I’m afraid.”

“Doing a better job than me,” Crowley grunted.

“What?”

Crowley seemed to shrink down into himself. “Nothing.”

Aziraphale frowned at the demon… and, abruptly, remembered the thing that had precipitated the scene they now found themselves in. All his worry returned at full force. “Crowley. What were you saying, at the park? Right before you—”

“ _Nothing_ ,” Crowley repeated, more forcefully.

“Unacceptable, try again.” Aziraphale bit his lip. “I _heard_ you say it.”

“It doesn’t matter. It just… it all got to me for a moment, before. It’s fine now.”

“Are you sure? What is ‘it all’?”

Crowley didn’t answer.

Aziraphale squeezed his eyes shut, doing his best to swallow down the anxiety. Panicking wouldn’t help anything.

There was something in his notes about openly and honestly expressing feelings, wasn’t there? Oh, what did it say? How was this supposed to work? What was he supposed to do? What was he supposed to _say_?

Aziraphale opened his eyes again. “ _Please_ , Crowley. I’m worried. You said you can’t do something, but I don’t know what it is you have to do. I… I know I might not deserve it, but how about you trust me for once?”

Crowley jerked, then glared at him. “I do trust you! Are you kidding me? Of course I trust you, Aziraphale! That is not what this is about!”

Under other circumstances, that offended outburst, the outright statement of trust — something they both knew, implicitly, but so rarely articulated aloud — might have warmed Aziraphale’s heart. In point of fact, even under the present circumstances, it still warmed his heart.

 _Focus_ , he told himself.

Aziraphale kept his voice as quiet and calm as he could, though he suspected he sounded a bit more desperate than intended. “What _is_ it about, then? Tell me what it is about, Crowley. Just say it. _Please._ ”

~ ~ ~

Aziraphale had said _please_ twice now, and he was looking at Crowley with those implausibly pleading blue eyes.

Dammit. Blessit. Somethingit. That meant Crowley was going to have to actually answer the question. Answer the question _openly and honestly_ , no less. Bloody Hell, or Heaven, or Earth, or Somewhere Or Other.

Not that Crowley wanted to lie, of course — he didn’t do that, not really, not to Aziraphale, he hadn’t really lied to Aziraphale even in the Beginning. He just didn’t really want to tell the truth, either. Skirting the truth, or stretching it (with words like _I’m fine_ or _it was nothing_ ) wasn’t the same thing as _lying_.

But Aziraphale was still looking at Crowley, too hopeful, too worried, too _caring_ for Crowley to deny him the explanation that — if Crowley was switching into honesty mode here anyway — the angel probably really did deserve to hear, no matter how he might react.

_Blast it._

“The problem is,” Crowley said, and tried to figure out how to finish that sentence. “The thing is. The problem is. We’re safe now.”

Aziraphale appeared baffled, for which Crowley couldn’t really blame him. In retrospect, it occurred to him that that statement did sound fairly nonsensical.

“We’re safe?” Aziraphale repeated. “And? That’s… a problem?”

“No! Yes! No!” Crowley groaned. “ _No_ , that’s not what I mean. Look. We’re here, and this whole bloody planet still exists, and we _are_ safe, or as safe as we’re ever going to be, definitely safer than I thought we ever could be.”

“Yes?” Aziraphale nodded, slowly. Following along with Crowley, but clearly having no idea where the demon was going with this.

To be fair, Crowley himself didn’t know exactly where the demon was going with this either. “Right. We’re safe. And no, that part isn’t the problem, obviously, I mean, it’s _great_ , really it is, best thing ever. It’s just.”

He stopped.

“It’s just…?” Aziraphale prompted after a minute.

“Just. Just, we’re safe, and we’re free, and nothing’s… I mean everything’s… I mean. It’s all the _same_. You don’t see it?” Crowley was getting on a roll now. “Everything’s different, but nothing’s _different_. We’re still playing this, this _game_ , secret agents at the park, dancing around each other and pretending we don’t even _like_ each other and— ”

“Oh.” Aziraphale looked suddenly, desperately, sad. “Crowley, I’m _sorry_. I never— I didn’t mean—”

“I _know_ you didn’t mean it!” Crowley snapped. “Knew you didn’t mean it even when you said it, didn't I? Told you that then, of course I know it.” Most of the time he knew it, at least. Right now, he knew it. “You should try looking at yourself in a mirror sometime when you lie, it’s absurdly obvious, sometimes you can even see it from behind, the way your hands… oh, never mind. Blast it, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about before, I’m talking about _now_.”

~ ~ ~

“ _Now_ ,’” Aziraphale echoed. Vaguely, he recalled something in one of his articles about restatement and clarification. “Are you saying,” he said carefully, “that you want to… to change the rules of the game?”

“I don’t _want_ a game!” Crowley’s voice was rising.

Aziraphale swallowed. “What _do_ you want?” he asked softly.

“What do I _want_? All I ever wanted…” Crowley didn’t finish the thought. “Bugger. What do _you_ want, Aziraphale?”

And somehow, that question shook Aziraphale to his core. He was at least self-aware enough to distantly recognize his own hypocrisy, given that the question was identical to the one he’d just directed at Crowley. For a moment, he didn’t think he was capable of answering it at all.

On the other hand, this question was, after all, an introduction to almost precisely the conversational topic that Aziraphale had been wishing for at least since Armageddon, if not long before; the conversation for which he’d spent months researching communication tips in the hopes of giving himself the courage to actually broach the topic; the conversational topic he probably would never have gotten the courage to actually broach, if Crowley’s flight this afternoon hadn’t forced his hand; the conversation that Aziraphale was still and possibly irrationally afraid to have, but that nevertheless, he realized, he _wanted_ to have.

 _Open and honest communication_.

“All I want,” said Aziraphale, “is to be with you. I never wanted anything else.”

Speaking that millennia-unspoken truth so simply, so openly, so honestly, was terrifying. Yet it also felt somehow, strangely, _right_.

Crowley looked shocked.

Aziraphale mentally berated himself. This was a mistake, a massive mistake, he should never have done this, his notes were just so much nonsense and he’d have to throw them all out, he should have just let Crowley be, he’d just spoiled everything. _You are never communicating again,_ Aziraphale’s rapidly-spiraling brain informed him angrily.

“But,” Crowley said then in a small voice, and Aziraphale’s brain slowed in its spiral, then froze altogether. “But that’s the same thing _I_ want.”

~ ~ ~

“Why didn’t you _tell_ me?” Aziraphale demanded.

“You didn’t exactly say anything either!” Crowley retorted.

“That didn’t stop you before! It never did. Eden, the Arrangement, godfathering… you always took the first step. Every time. How was I supposed to know this was any different?”

“Do I have to do everything here?” Crowley slumped. “Look. I just didn’t… I didn’t want to go too fast for you. That’s all it was. I didn’t know what you wanted, and I didn’t want to… to mess things up.”

The _again_ at the end of the sentence went unspoken.

Aziraphale deflated like a lead balloon. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too. We’re both idiots, aren’t we?”

“Possibly.”

“It took me freaking us both out, and you overthinking everything before that, just to sort out that we were both thinking pretty much the same thing.”

“It seems to have worked out for the best,” Aziraphale observed. “But if you don’t mind, could we please try not to repeat the running-away-after-saying-something-ambiguously-ominous part?”

“Yeah.” Crowley grimaced. “I’m not doing that again, don’t worry. Don’t plan on it, anyway.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“And neither should you. Stressing for months and not telling me about it.”

“I won’t. Well, I’ll try not to.”

“Glad to hear it.”

~ ~ ~

They sat there in the Bentley, Crowley behind the wheel, Aziraphale in the passenger seat, side by side, separated by approximately ten inches of empty space. It felt like ten yards.

 _Open, honest communication_ , Aziraphale told himself. Even if he still couldn’t quite bring to mind anything else from his pages of notes (he was really going to have to review the contents of that binder, still in Crowley’s lap, at some point), it was going too well to stop now.

“Crowley?”

“Huh?”

“There’s, ah. While we’re on the subject. That is. There’s something else I think that I might like. If you think you’d like it. _Only_ if you’d like it, of course.”

“Eh? What is it?”

Aziraphale gestured obscurely between them, suddenly — and _again_ — finding himself at a loss for words. “I don’t… I don’t know how to say it.”

He looked to Crowley for help, which was ridiculous, because this was something _Aziraphale_ wanted, so how was Crowley supposed to be able to help him figure out what to call it?

Except that Crowley was looking at him searchingly, like he thought he might be able to help, like he might actually know the thing Aziraphale had in mind after all. “Do you mean, ngh?”

“Er.”

“I mean. Urk. Do you mean. Ngk. Cuddling?”

Of the two of them, Crowley was usually much more adept when it came to making inarticulate noises. In this case, however, Aziraphale did a rather impressive rendition of his own.

Crowley flinched. “Drat, I was just… got it wrong… just didn’t know what you…”

“Shh.” Greatly daring, Aziraphale extended a hand and rested it on Crowley’s shoulder. The demon stopped talking.

“I rather think you got it right,” Aziraphale said.

~ ~ ~

After some mutual maneuvering, they eventually managed to get into a somewhat more promising position, despite the spatial limitations of their setting. Still in the front seat of the Bentley, Crowley still in the driver’s seat and Aziraphale still on the passenger side, but closer, much closer than before, almost touching.

There was about half an inch of empty space left between them.

And then Crowley took a deep, deep breath, and closed the gap, laying his head on the angel’s shoulder. He kept his eyes closed as well, as if that could somehow make the impossibility of what was happening a little less overwhelming.

A moment later, Crowley felt Aziraphale’s cheek settle against his own scalp.

“Good?” Crowley asked, not opening his eyes.

“Good,” Aziraphale confirmed.

They sat there.

“Y’know,” Crowley whispered after a while — voice low enough that he wasn’t sure if the words were actually audible, but it was okay either way — “have to admit, I was pretty skeptical about that whole talking idea of yours.”

Apparently, the words were indeed audible. “I could tell,” Aziraphale murmured back. “I do confess, there were moments when I had my own doubts as well.”

“But this, this makes it all worth it.”

“It does,” Aziraphale agreed. And if Crowley had had his eyes open, he might have seen just the faintest of bastardly glints in the angel’s eye. “I told you so.”

Crowley snorted, and didn’t open his eyes.

Aziraphale’s arm slipped behind his back. Crowley let his own wrap around the angel’s waist in return.

“Still good?” Aziraphale, this time.

“Still good.”

They sat there.

 _I can’t do this anymore_ , Crowley had said at the park, in a fit of frustration with their millennia-old dance and distance.

This, now…

 _This_ , he thought, he could do a whole lot more of.

~ ~ ~

The urge to project Freddie Mercury’s voice at top tactless volume was almost irresistible. But for quite possibly the first time in history, the Bentley maintained a discreet silence.

**Author's Note:**

> 1 Were 1926 Bentleys supposed to have power windows? Obviously not. Did Crowley’s 1926 Bentley have power windows? Obviously.[return to text]
> 
> 2 This last was the most remarkable; Crowley had not been aware that Aziraphale even knew what an internet forum _was_ , let alone how to navigate them.[return to text]
> 
> As always, comments means a lot to me and never fail to make my day, so I would be very happy to hear from you if you enjoyed this. :) Thank you for reading!


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